Threads like this crack me up. For about eight years, every one of my left-leaning friends talked like it was the end of the world, and that we'd never recover from all of the awful things that the Bush administration had done. Now, for the last 14 months, all of my right-leaning friends are talking like it is the end of the world, and saying we'll never recover from all of the awful things that the Obama administration is doing. Just like we wouldn't recover from Clinton. Or Bush and Reagan before him. Or Carter before him. See a pattern developing?

I grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan. Some years, the water would be high and when October and November storms came in a lot of places would get washed into the lake and destroyed. "The high water is here to stay" people would say, so everybody would build seawalls at $200 a foot, and pay to move their places back from the water's edge. Then over the next 10 years the water would drop, and everybody would talk about how low the water was, and how Chicago was pulling too much water out of the lake, and say "the low water is here to stay", so everybody would build new, lower docks at $200 a foot. And so the cycle goes on, and on, and on.

The great thing about this country is that it shifts back, and forth, and back, and forth. But nothing much ever changes, because people don't like change very much and they push back against it - by voting one way or the other.

So, depending on your persuasion, the water is either rising right now, or it's falling. Build your seawall or lower your dock accordingly. I, personally, will be out fishing.